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Titan May Have an Ocean
olsmeister writes "Titan has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans. Now it looks as if Titan is even stranger still. The evidence comes from careful observations of Titan's orbit and rotation. This indicates that Titan has an orbit similar to our Moon's; it always presents the same face toward Saturn and its axis of rotation tilts by about 0.3 degrees. This data allows astronomers to work out Titan's moment of inertia and points to something interesting. The numbers indicate that Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its center."
You don't have to be a quantum mechanic,
To know that this ocean is a little Methanic,
If atmospheric densities remain the same,
Then other hydrocarbons are not to blame,
For the process being just a little too Titanic.
operated by an army of monkeys, governed by trial and error!
JK, props to the people who can tell it's got a gooey center just by the way it wobbles.
"Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its centre".
Maybe it's partially hollow. Pellucidar, anyone? Possibly inhabited by Heinlein's Puppet Masters...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Stuff like this brings out the inner child in me, wanting to explore and see these discoveries with my own eyes. Sometimes I wish I was born 500+ years from now so I could actually be able to explore these strange worlds with my own eyes. Not saying humans would have these places colonized but at least have some sort of outpost nearby able to fully explore these places robotically or with human presence.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
No, I didn't RTFA - why do you ask?
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
If there's one thing that should be included there, it's that the 'ocean' isn't a surface ocean, like Earth's, but a SUBSURFACE one, like Europa's!
Editors, for fuck's sake, please check the submissions, not only for grammar, but for factual accuracy too!
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans.
!troll. Who am I trolling? Slashdot's editors? All I'm saying is that this could've used a couple more goings over for grammar.
Every Titan May Have an Ocean. :)
Sorry. Just trolling
Approving tens of articles per day while censoring dissent with the moderation system is exhausting work. You should have more sympathy. The few minutes they would have to expend on actually "editing" is just too much to ask.
Hmmm...interesting data, wrong conclusion. Ice FLOATS because it is LESS dense than water.
You want to go to Titan? All it has is that run down amusement park.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Grammar is there merely to FACILITATE communication, not to be its master. Did communication occur? Did you understand the meaning through context? Kindly shut your pie-hole.
Good-bye
Sounds like a candy.
Actually if Titan has a methane ocean under the surface, it would really fill the role as out fill up station. Now we take the methane and extract hydrogen to fuel our ships?
not a planetary genius here but couldn't that point to lots of things other than it just having an ocean?
Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans.
It's more than just a bit strange to claim in the title that Titan may have an ocean, and then state in the first line the planet is of particular interest because it has lakes and oceans. Please, editors, it's a (possible) subsurface ocean.
And its easy to tell of its hard boiled or raw. It might be easer to see if you have one of each. Grats to the Scientists that can do this with a moon.
What's with this "may" stuff? It either does or it does not
did you forget to take your meds?
sweet! we can land there!
Anybody want my mod points?
It's not only orbit-locked, but it dances just as good as it wants. Now do the Titan Up.
That's no moon
(... and not even the ice geysers of Enceladus should sway our choice).
Why? Because as Professor Peter Ward claims in his very interesting book on astro-biology "Life as we do not know it", only "Titan holds the promise of not just alien life but of MORE THAN ONE KIND OF FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT alien life". (emphasis mine). There could be."three distinct empires of life, from two entirely different trees; CHON life of two kinds (ammono and water CHON life) and silicon life." (p. 234). While he said the "CHON ammono life would be found, presumably beneath the ice, in the ammonia ocean" and the "silicon life would exist, if it existed at all, in the ethane-methane lakes of Titan's surface" he thought the "earthlike" CHON life would be found in the transient freshwater lakes after an asteroid or comet impact.
Well, if there is a (huge) water ocean beneath the ice (and below the ammonia ocean?) the earthlike CHON life wouldn't have to depend on transient impact events! I guess the reason why the researchers believe the ocean to be water (as opposed to the methane the Technology Review editors seem to think), is because the temperature and pressure at those depths make water the most likely candidate. So anyway to recap, on Titan there are a possibility of THREE COMPLETELY different "empires" (his term) of life with only one of them having even the remotest possibility of being anything like life on earth (even if it is earthlike CHON life, that means only that it uses the carbon and other atoms at energy levels corresponding to liquid water, they might not use DNA, RNA or even proteins!).
The reasons why (he suggests) we should skip over Mars, Europa (and I presume Enceladus) is as follows: while Mars was certainly once capable of supporting (Earthlike CHON) life, now it is cold, dry and likely dead. For Europa (and Enceladus) he claims that while they have the liquid water necessary to support (again earthlike CHON) life, they don't have enough energy. His calculations show that the gravitational flexing caused by Jupiter, the main source of energy for Europa, would only be enough to drive a modest ecosystem that would be dispersed in an ocean of millions of cubic kilometers of water. Too dilute to be sustainable. (The same would be presumably be true to an even greater extent of Enceledus).
Titan, on the other hand, is large enough to presumably be able to generate heat internally (it is the largest moon in the solar system) and also gets (some) energy from tidal interactions with Saturn. An interesting additional input is the (weak) ultraviolet rays from the (distant) sun that hits its atmosphere (the only substantial one of any moon) and creates a whole host of organic compounds. Finally if his speculations on the other empires of life are correct, their much colder metabolism may allow (require?) them to exist on much less energy our liquid water based ones do.
This is, of course, rank speculation but the finding a new empire of life would be truly monumental, it would mean life is likely present in every solar system in the galaxy. Of course even finding "earthlike" CHON life would be astounding. Anyway, if the beauty of Saturn's rings weren't enough, this is another great reason to go back. Besides landing and exploring Titan could be comparatively easy. Aeorobraking, aerocapture and reentry will save a lot of fuel compared with landing on an airless world. Parachutes alone will work extremely well in the dense atmosphere and low gravity (unlike Mars) as will planes and hot "air" balloons. The surface ocean is likely to be very calm so boats and submersibles should be usable. There is also land for rovers and drilling operations. The only problem is distance (and money), so let's get cracking on nuclear powered ion engines!
The first thing that came to mind when I read that headline was to do this
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
FTFS: "The numbers indicate that Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its centre"
FTFA: "It's also worth pointing out that there is another explanation for Titan's strange moment of inertia. The calculations assume that the moon's orbit is in a steady state but it's also possible that Titan's orbit is changing, perhaps because it has undergone a recent shift due to some large object passing nearby, a comet or asteroid, for example."
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Where there be oceans for sailin', there be whales for the whalin'! Fetch quick my harpoon, matie, and lager the ale and rum! We sail at dawn!
Too bad it would take about a year to get to Titan. The best option would be to find some way to go 10 percent the speed of light like a Fusion rocket engine. Then we could get there in 12 hours (relative to the traveler).
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
We are about to discover that Earth is not the only habitable planet with oceans. As a side note, I think some new projects (like this one linked) that simulate solar systems are quite neat and their planets sport oceans as well:
http://www.etereo.com.br
The largest moon in the solar system is Ganymede. If he said Titan was you may want to check some of his other facts as he missed out on something as elementry as the largest moon in the solar system.
Titan, [snip] (it is the largest moon in the solar system)
*Cough*Ganymede*cough*, nit pick, but do carry on.
if it has an ocean its just logical to assume there are sirens too
Yeah, but Europa also has that weird orange colored water seeping through the ice cracks. That seems like strong enough evidence of something weird going on to investigate. More direct evidence than speculation I mean.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Doesn't gravity dictate that more massive stuff should fall into the core?
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
OK who is the joker trying to pass off Spirograph doodles as scientific data? April 1st is long past.
And it's people who think like that (dreaming of visiting new worlds) are the ones who help bring computers, planes, trains, and automobiles to smug individuals such as yourself. You know, so that you can post drivel like this and somehow get modded 'insightful'.
I'm pretty sure someone 500 years ago said something as snarky and counterproductive as what you just posted, genius.
(another starry-eyed individual)
My wife gave birth to our daughter in a "Surf Titan!" t-shirt, from the Planetary society. Daughter is 16 in August. And no, I don't have pictures.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
This is not a new hypothesis:
Lorenz et al. from 2008
Lorenz, R.D. et al., "Titan's Rotation Reveals an Internal Ocean and Changing Zonal Winds", Science, 319, 1649-1651, 21 Mar 2008
Spirograph?!?!
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
How'd you get such a low one than if not for white knighting? :)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?